Recent content by beekake

Thanks for the tips!

I’ve got a mated queen in a mini-nuc. There are not many workers with her and the only comb in the mini-nuc has been built in the feeder compartment. I’ve tried to cut some of it out and move it to encourage them into the frames In the mini nuc but no joy. Bottom line, the queen is difficult to...

I suspect that the daily pattern is influenced by temperature, with peak weight coinciding with peak temperature, and vice versa (as derekm suggests). The weight gain from day to day is really clear though- nice flow at the start of June. What happened to the June gap?!

Sounds interesting. I'm assuming that the clearer board on top goes upside down, so the bees exit through a large gap, but can't get back in through a small one. I'd always assumed that the motivation for the bees to evacuate the supers being cleared was the sudden change in the hive odour...

Went to take off 4 supers from my strongest hive. The clearer board (rhombus, split into two with half at each of two corners) had been on for 24h...my usual method, works a dream normally. The air above the hive was full of bees, the sound was incredible, and there were hundreds of bees trying...

Thanks everyone for your helpful replies!

Hi everyone, My giordan drill-driven extractor is giving me cause for concern. After a couple of years perfect service, the drill (a silverline variable speed hammer drill, which has been a brilliant servant) has been struggling a bit. I swapped it out for an identical new replacement drill...

Update: checked on the hive this week- and after a couple of broodless weeks, found a new queen busy laying up the frames with worker brood! So the DLQ has gone and my experiment is a success of sorts. I'll give her another couple of weeks to see if she produces nice off spring and lays a good...

I've got one on order ��

Last week I checked on a swarm I'd caught some weeks earlier...headed by a virgin queen. Lots of drone brood (not patchy), but the occasional sealed worker cell. The bees had drawn several queen cells in the middle of the frames, and on checking one of them there was a metamorphosed queen in...

Checked on a modified snelgrove II phase 2...everything as expected...bees calm and productive and queen rapidly refilling brood nest with eggs. Stark contrast to last week, when I found that the bees were still in two minds (queen had been returned to original site and was laying well, but one...

Well, this snelgrove malarkey is just not working out for me! I had split another colony a week before the troublesome one featured in this post, and it was all going to the book. I had moved the queen back home after taking down the emergency QCs and she was back laying again like a trooper...

Thanks- I think maybe one of the cells I transferred had the tip built over... so might not be viable. there is certainly a flow on...the final week of the OSR has coincided with sunny warm days... the apiary is so noisy and busy. I will cease to worry then, and hope for more good weather over...

I tried grafting larvae for the first time ever last week. I was reasonably happy with the number of queen cells produced- 9 of 21 (i only want one or two queens from them!). Anyway, when I transferred some of them into nucs today, I noticed several of the queen cells had been extensively...

So, I checked today and it was as I thought ... the queen has gone... no sign of her anywhere and both halves of the split have made plenty of emergency queen cells. I don't have any queens in reserve. So I'm in two minds what to do...leave both to it and see which queen is best before...